Ouborgprijs 2001

Vojta Dukát

As a photographer and filmmaker Vojta Dukát (1947)has developed a body of work which is both unique and outside any trends or fashions. This has to do with his choice of subjects: everyday life on locations where the Western way of life has not yet penetrated: a village in Portugal, the Ukraine or his native country of Czechoslovakia. His photographs and films usually are in black and white and radiate an intimate and romantic atmosphere.

Vojta Dukát was born in Brno, Moravia, but has lived in The Netherlands since the late sixties. After his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Filmacademie in Amsterdam he started to travel and opted for a life of freedom as opposed to the deadline and discipline commonly associated with the life of a photographer. Dukát is not interested in politically-charged or sensational images. He prefers to observe the daily routines of ordinary people in their own surroundings. 'I very much celebrate the visual aspects of life'.

This is what attracted Eva Gerlach to his work. Together they made the publication 'Alles is werkelijk hier' ( Arbeiderspers), in which the poems of Eva Gerlach and the photographs of Vojta Dukát are merged together, without losing their own individual quality.

In 1997 Dukát received the Capi-Lux Alblas Prijs, ‘which is presented to a photographer or creator of images from The Netherlands or one who lives and works there, whose contribution to the field of photography or electronic imagery in the broadest sense of the word, is highly individual and/or of social importance to the medium itself, and whose vision is or has been a major influence on his colleagues and on emerging photographers and image makers.' The award was accompanied by a presentation of his work in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Publication Vojta Dukát


photo: Vojta Dukát

photo: Vojta Dukát

photo: Vojta Dukát